Rudolf Wucherer, chairman of the
Executive Board from 1952 to 1954. |
Friedrich Linde and in particular his brother-in-law Rudolf Wucherer made use of the difficult years of the post-war period to modernize their gas operations and streamline their organization. At the same time, Richard Linde in Department B (gas liquefaction and separation) worked on the technological optimization of the Linde process. Engineers increased the purity of the oxygen from Linde plants from 98 to 99 percent and that of nitrogen to 99.999 percent. At the same time they reduced the plants’ energy consumption. |
They also developed a process for separating coke oven gas to produce a mixture of hydrogen and nitrogen for the synthesis of ammonia. Linde sold one of the first plants of this type to a Belgian customer in 1924. In the subsequent four years, the company had sold or booked orders for 47 such plants of various sizes.